Additional terrorist attacks are "inevitable" in the Asia-Pacific region -- where terrorists are actively training, recruiting and using "legitimate fronts to pursue barbaric ends," Australia's foreign minister said yesterday at the opening of an anti-terrorism conference on the bomb-scarred tourist island of Bali.
"Terrorist groups are cooperating across the region, transiting borders using one country to train in, another to raise funds in and another for safe haven. They are working together to maximize the impact of their activities," Alexander Downer said.
PHOTO: AFP
Combating the al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah topped the agenda at the two-day regional conference attended by ministers and senior officials from 33 countries, including US Attorney General John Ashcroft.
"We have convened here in Bali to deepen our cooperation against those who oppose our shared values and those who would murder innocents," Ashcroft told reporters. "Through the cooperative efforts of countries represented at this ministerial meeting we will win the battle for freedom, we will win the battle for tolerance, we will win the battle to defeat terror."
The countries are expected to bolster cooperation in intelligence gathering and offer new anti-terror aid for developing countries like Indonesia.
It's unlikely they'll sign any comprehensive agreements that would enable them to move beyond the two-way pacts that have damaged Jemaah Islamiyah, but failed to defeat it. Critics say mutual suspicions have prevented the creation of region-wide mechanisms, such as a multinational police force.
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri told the conference delegates that "wider and more effective cooperation" has now become "our common duty."
"This solid coordination mechanism is necessary, for only in this way would we be able to penetrate into the terrorist network and cells that are neatly, tightly and closely built," she said.
Downer announced the opening of a transnational crime center in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Run jointly by Indonesia and Australia, it will offer anti-terror training and be an information clearinghouse.
The center will foster anti-terrorism skills like "forensic training, strike forces, bomb disposal units and training, response training for sabotage and hostage-taking," said Bali's police chief, Inspector-General I Made Mangku Pastika.
Also Wednesday, Indonesia and Australia signed an accord on the exchange of financial intelligence to fight money laundering -- the latest of nine anti-terror agreements signed between the two countries.
Hundreds of police and troops patrolled near the conference at Bali's Grand Hyatt beach resort, with a police ship just off the coast. Bali was the site of the Oct. 12, 2002 twin nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian tourists.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has spawned more terrorists than any other Asian country -- and has been the target of some of their worst attacks.
Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for both the Bali attack and the Aug. 5, 2003 bombing that killed 12 people at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS